Elisabeth Jennings' "English Wildflowers"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2021

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Elizabeth (Joan) Jennings CBE (18 July 1926 – 26 October 2001[1]) was an English poet. Regarded as traditionalist rather than an innovator, Jennings is known for her lyric poetry and mastery of form.[2] Her work displays a simplicity of metre and rhyme shared with Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn, all members of the group of English poets known as The Movement.[2] She always made it clear that, whilst her life, which included a spell of severe mental illness, contributed to the themes contained within her work, she did not write explicitly autobiographical poetry. Her deeply held Roman Catholicism coloured much of her work.[2]

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern and today is Tuesday, June 29th, 2021. Thank you so much for
0:08.5	bearing with me. As for the last couple weeks, I have been in absentia here on the podcast. I have
0:14.0	been taking care of some other things and so had to put the show, at least my involvement on the show,
0:20.4	and a little bit of a break.
0:21.5	Thank you to Heidi for filling in with for me a couple times.
0:23.9	So I just wanted to say that at the top.
0:26.0	Today's poem is by an English poet who lives from 1926, July of 1926 to October of 2001.
0:34.5	Her name was Elizabeth Jennings.
0:37.2	She was part of a movement called the,
0:39.1	well, the movement, which was a term coined by a literary editor of the spectator named
0:45.3	J.D. Scott, and that was in the 50s, I believe. Her group of writers included Philip Larkin,
0:51.8	Kingsley Amos, Donald Davy, DJ Enrae, John Wayne, Tom Gond, and Robert Conquest,
0:57.7	all of those pretty notable poets in their own right. And I'll talk a little bit more about what
1:03.6	they were consumed with and why they, you know, refer to themselves as a movement or thought of
1:09.0	themselves as a movement. But first, today's poem, and it is called English wildflowers.
1:15.4	It goes like this.
1:19.7	Forget the Latin names.
1:21.9	The English ones are gracious and specific.
1:26.3	Head rows are quickening fast with vetch and cow parsley,
1:29.4	and fast along the lawn the daisies rise for chains or the murdering lawnmower.
1:35.5	Look everywhere.
1:37.0	There is all botany laid between rising corn, infesting hayfields.
	...

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